I predict that in the future, almost everything will be so simplified for humans that humans will actually crave the process of having more steps. (Like how flip phones used to have removable chargable batteries but we ‘improved’ to have smart phones but now we carry around power banks so we’re kind of back again)

My tool will be a tool to add more steps to processes, so there will be more effort needed to get stuff done. For example, if cooking becomes a 1-2 step process, I will create cooking kits(?) that require maybe 5 steps. It will be more steps but the feeling of achievement will be better. (It’s the difference between buying a premade cake and baking your own.)

The second passage stood out to me as I was reading it. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” While the rest of the passage talks about wear over time and how different technologies of different ages produced unique results, I saw another meaning to this. I saw that this also meant that things produced during certain times will hold different meanings; Reproducing the work does not reflect its original impact. This also ties into how artists who make replicas don’t produce work with the same intentions or train of thought as the original artist. Someone who recreates Van Gogh’s did not have the same turmoil or creative pauses as Van Gogh themselves. Original artists might have restarted or a hesitated on a piece of art hundreds of times but a replica would not share the same.
Bringing it back to the technology, it’s similar in that sense as well. As technology advances, there are easier ways to achieve the same effects but is the equipment not also part of the process? There are pros and cons to either side, obviously one is that you’re able to work faster or able to fix mistakes easier but again, it’s never really the same. The passage itself also mentioned the travel history of the art. For example, paintings that have survived war cannot compare to replicas. I guess you could say what the passage means by “presence in time and space” is a piece’s essence, its soul. To make an original idea, the artist puts their unique spin on things, even if it’s a simple landscape. That’s why two artists making original works based on the same reference will create different pieces. To put it short, replicas lack ‘lore’ and I think that’s really important to remember now when self proclaimed AI artists present themselves as artists who pick up paintbrushes. But that’s my take.

Astro Boy is closest to the type of cartoons I watched as a kid, although I’ll admit I was watching older cartoons. So this type of hand-drawn, thick-lined animation is very nostalgic to me, and I personally will always prefer this type of two-dimensional work over the newer three-dimensional work. I think I feel this way because the newer three-dimensional work can come off cold and veer off from being cartoon-like. The artistic choice of using 2d animation will always visually attract me more than other works; it fulfills the expectations of what I want from a cartoon/animation, regardless of the topic.
BEAUTY reminded me of what I used to see in the background of Little Einsteins, a cartoon teaching children about music, and mostly the classics. The very traditional oil painting type backgrounds mixed with movement, making worlds collide. I will say that I didn’t like this as much as others because I guess you could say it shatters my expectations for an animation, but also the movements of the art make me anxious. It reminds me a lot of how people will use AI to generate moving images, but I also do not like those either, so that’s probably a bigger reason why.
Rejected and HERTZFELDT ON BLU-RAY are two videos I really liked because they’re gag videos. I instantly connected them to other animations like the asdfmovies. They’re funny, silly, and not meant to be taken seriously. The plain background really contributes to it because you don’t need a complicated background to get the joke across. Truly like bringing a joke panel to life. I guess you could compare it to reading a text sent from a friend about a funny story versus them reenacting it in front of you.

The passage that stood out most to me was “your education.” This stood out to me because it’s been a topic largely discussed about my generation, so it hits home. Growing up in an environment where the difference in intensity of information you’re being taught and the information you experience definitely shapes your world differently. I never thought of bringing school education into this conversation; I have always considered it a comparison between “child appropriate memories” vs “adult memories,” but it’s clear that school education plays a factor in this as well. There are varying degrees to this too, depending on how much you are affected by these events in the news: do you have relatives that are directly affected by war, is your household income enough to keep up with inflation, is it safe to go to school? It brings into question whether the education children are given is enough to keep up with their world. A real-world example is how people say, “TikTok is teaching them more than they ever learned in school.” While I argue that many times it shows that many people just did not care about certain topics, the bigger picture is that the “scarce but ordered” education system needs to be updated. I immediately see the pros and cons with this; there is only so much information for a child to take in via school learning, and it’d be impossible to streamline education standards, but it’s safe to say that changes should be implemented. I do not particularly enjoy the choices that are being implemented; my education process growing up was so different from what younger students are experiencing, but I do not see improvement. The intention behind education has changed from wanting children to walk away with knowledge, to testing scores, and it feels like just pushing children onto the next person to handle.
But in the context of the passage, growing up as a child of today is definitely absurd.

Tape Pull: Staticky and you can hear the tape unsticking to the rest of the roll, the feeling of tackiness
Hitting a metal pot: There’s a reverb, and you can hear the sound change as it bounces; it gets quieter but not quite like sound just fading.
Hot Water Dispenser: gushing sound grows louder the longer you press the dispense button

The text provided a great deeper thinking about sound and music. I think music is such a normal thing in my life that I don’t often perceive it as something that stands out. But music is complex and when I look at musicians being able to break down the process of making a song, it’s a world that I don’t understand too well. Sound itself is very complex and it’s amazing how sound can be altered in production. There’s so much possibility in sound and I’d even go to a point to say that sound can have more more possibilities than video because you’re relying on auditory senses instead of visual, and your brain can fill in the visual parts.

UBU Page Artist: C. Lavender
There’s a lot of possibility in the sounds and I find that these sounds could add a lot of depth to songs or compositions of sound. I did previously think of sound as art but now my argument for it is stronger after reading the text!